Like so many World War II soldiers who are called heroes, Bill
Arballo says he was "just doing my job. I was a medic," he says.
"We got caught in a big situation. All I did was help as many of
the wounded as I could. Then I got evacuated myself."

And like so many heroes, he was just a kid, a 19-year-old who
had graduated from Oceanside High School in 1942.

Arballo's job was to patch up wounded soldiers using the skills
he acquired in the Army's crash course in medicine: 12 hours a day,
six days a week for eight weeks. While intensive, the training
still wasn't enough to prepare him for what he would do on the
battlefield.

"It's hard to be taught that," he said. "You have to learn that
in the field."

Arballo was in Italy during the Anzio campaign, arriving a month
before the Jan. 22, 1944 invasion and staying until he was wounded
in September.

The Anzio campaign is remembered as one of the most frustrating
of World War II. A surprise landing that could have led to the
immediate liberation of Rome was squandered when Allied commanders
hesitated, allowing Germans to block their progress north. Both
sides dug in, settling into a stalemate that had not been seen
since the days of the Western Front of World War I. Sixty years ago
this week, the Allies finally broke through after a three-month
lull.

The campaign

By 1943, the Allies had control of Africa and Sicily, and
Italian troops had been defeated on all fronts. Dictator Benito
Mussolini's colleagues turned against their leader that summer and
had him arrested, although he was rescued by Germans several months
later and set up a Republican Fascist state in northern Italy.

But Italy had surrendered in September 1943, and Mussolini was
little more than a puppet for the Germans, who were really in
control of the country. The Germans had disarmed Italian troops and
begun a slow withdrawal to the north.

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill believed defeating the
Germans in Italy was the best approach to winning the war, as it
would strike at the Nazis' "soft underbelly" and deplete their
troops where most vulnerable.

Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces,
was focused on a cross-channel invasion of France, and in early
January 1944, he relinquished command of Allied forces in the
Mediterranean to a British general, Sir Henry M. Wilson, to
concentrate on the June Normandy invasion.

With the British now in command in the Mediterranean,
Churchill's plan to invade Italy was put into place. Allies already
had landed at Calabria, Taranto and Salerno in early September
1943.

Martin Finkelstein of San Marcos, a sergeant with the 505th
Parachute Infantry Regiment in the 82nd Airborne, landed in
Salerno.

"When we first went in, they marched us around this mountain and
we found the Germans were dug in, facing the beach," Finkelstein
said. "We went around them and came up behind. The Messerschmitts
would come over this mountain, strafe the beach, then they'd go
back over our heads. Five minutes later, here would come this
Spitfire. Five minutes later, here comes Jerry again. This went on
for two days."